Post Content

Mary Worth, 10/1/16

OH MY GOD (literally): Iris is going to cure Tommy from his pill addiction, through Jesus. Remember when Tommy was in prison, and Iris went to visit him, and he waved a tiny, tiny bible at her? It seemed unlikely to me at the time that Tommy had truly turned to God for forgiveness of his various meth-dealing sins, and while his bible was far too small to hide weed or a shiv in, I assumed he was using it to distract Iris while a confederate picked her pocket or something. But no, apparently he had turned to it for “help,” but once he got deep into the endless laws about diet and ritual purity in Exodus, he “couldn’t keep up with it.” Thanks to his more studious mother carefully marking all of the passages in scripture that deal with opioid abuse, Tommy will soon be on the road to recovery and won’t further burden our tax-funded SAMHSA facilities, unlike some atheist pill fiends we could mention.

Mark Trail, 10/1/16

Meanwhile, our heroes in Mark Trail are about to solve their problems by recourse to a much more ancient deity. This ruined temple to a long-forgotten Polynesian fire god is now infested with ants that are foreign to the island and must be removed. The god can only be awoken with a sacrifice, though. A virgin sacrifice. We now know why Abbey was so keen to get Mark over here.

Post Content

Beetle Bailey, 9/25/16

“Beetle and/or Sarge and/or sometimes one of the other characters dangle helplessly from a tree branch protruding from a cliff” is a common trope in Beetle Bailey, but to my knowledge we’ve never seen what happens before those hilarious hijinks … until now! Apparently they trip over a rock. Or “the rock.” There’s just the one, so well known that it can be used as a landmark. You’d think they’d be better about not tripping over it, to be honest.

Mark Trail, 9/25/16

Look, Woods and Wildlife Magazine has to boost circulation, and they’re going to do it the only way they know how: by upping their Swimsuit Issue to three times a year. If you know a better way to get people to renew than to have Mark and Cherry pose sexily while keeping you up to date on important nature facts about, uh, sand or whatever, let’s hear it.

Spider-Man, 9/25/16

Peter’s married now and long out of the dating game, but it’s great to see he hasn’t forgotten classics like the old “Ooops, I ‘forgot’ my wallet” maneuver!

Post Content

The Lockhorns, 9/22/16

It’s actually pretty complicated trying to figure out how old someone is in a legacy comic strip, because you have to juggle a variety of narrative, cultural, and personal cues. Take the title hell-couple in the Lockhorns: they’re a long-time married couple still of working age, so probably no younger than 35 and no older than 55. That’s a span I’m right in the middle of! The seem older to me, because I’ve been reading The Lockhorns on and off since I was a child, plus their character design has been more or less set since they debuted almost 50 years ago, but today’s Leroy Lockhorn, the one who coexists with up-to-the-minute hipster stereotypes like our barista here, came of age in the 1960s at the very earliest. He has never sent or received a telegram in his life. And if he’s like literally every 35-to-55-year-old person I know, he sends text messages all the time. Basically Loretta can’t turn her back on him for more than 15 seconds before he starts just being a dick to someone for no reason.

Mark Trail, 9/22/16

At last, we’ve found out the relevance of this island makeout session from two years ago (strip time)/eleven weeks ago (real time): this couple brought invasive fire ants with them, as passengers on the firewood they burned to warm their writhing bodies. Fortunately, the U.S. Department of Agriculture keeps a meticulous log of the movement of every vessel everywhere on the seas, and was able to track down the culprits. After twenty hours of interrogation in a black-site USDA detention center in an unnamed Balkan country, our nautical lovebirds confessed to their woodcrime and will, after a tearful hour-long self-criticism session on TV, be sent to the labor camps where all Invasive Species Enablers are detained indefinitely until the War On Gross Bugs finally ends in victory.